the more complete will
our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity,” be.

— Friedrich
Nietzsche

On
the Genealogy of Morals

CHAPTER
ONE:MICKY

If you could
discover the great secret of life and death, would you do it—even if it meant
losing your mind?I’ve had very few
fears in my life, but one of them has been that I’d lose it someday.Do most people worry about this kind of
thing?I don’t know; I don’t know what
most people worry about.Love, I guess,
or when they’re going to get married.

Or maybe they
worry about finding a good job, because most people need to make money.And it’s best if you do your duty and go to
work.And when the weekend comes, you
can go out and party and get drunk and laid and have a swell time.

But I don’t
work.And I don’t play.I sit alone by myself and meditate.I contact, well… God.If you call it that.I contact something above or inside of
myself.

Believe it or
not, it’s given me a strange ability:I’m able to read other people’s minds.Not all the time, just sometimes, when I’m concentrating.I can know exactly what you’re thinking and
what the name of your cat is.Do you
believe me?I could say I don’t care if
you believe me or not.But that wouldn’t
be true.I care more than you know.Ifyou
don’t believe me, though, you could always go back to work—or play—or whatever
you do to amuse yourself.

I’m amusing
myself by typing on this computer.

It all began—or
shall I say it all ended?—when I started reading this girl’s mind, Viagra.(That was really her name, I’m not
kidding.)I said, “Viagra, why are you
thinking about having pork tonight when you know you’d rather have fish?”

And she said to
me, “Micky!” (That’s my name, Micky.)“What did you just say?”

“You heard me
correctly, Viagra.And I’d rather have
fish myself.I’m actually in the mood
for white wine, which doesn’t go as well with pork.”

So that was
that.We went to the fish market.We went to the liquor store.You see, Viagra and I had a cosmic
understanding.

I don’t have
cosmic understandings with many people.

I am quite a
loner type myself.

But with
Viagra—not only did we get along incredibly in bed—our minds had a rare disease
in common.You could call it
madness.Let’s just call it insanity.We were potentially insane.

That is, if you
call the rest of the world sane.

Now I don’t mean
to give you the impression that I’m a flaming heterosexual or anything, because
I’m not; I like guys too.But most
people have to pigeonhole themselves into one sane category or another.It helps them to think they are sane.And I don’t like to be sane, because I am insane and I can read other people’s
minds to prove it.

It was late on a
Tuesday night and I was sleeping over Viagra’s.I was having an intense dream and everyone I knew was in it.Then what happened was this big red truck
came directly at us and plowed us all down.We all got crushed and died.Now
it’s not true when they tell you that if you die in your dream it means you’re
dead.Not true at all; I’ve died many
times in my dreams—and I’m still alive.If you call this existence alive.I actually think I am quite dead to this world.

I know you won’t
believe me when I tell you what happened next with Viagra—but please remember that
I told you we had a cosmic connection.By the way, I purposely haven’t described her physically to you, the way
so many stories do.Because first of
all, this isn’t a story, this is real life; and second of all, I find that
totally boring.I mean, why can’t you
picture Viagra the way you want to picture her?What if I said she had hair as red as tomatoes on a summer night—then
you’d never be able to get that image out of your head; whereas if I said her
hair was as golden as the tip of a rocket, you would continue to think about
her that way, wouldn’t you?

The point I’m
making is that I want you to picture Viagra with your own imagination.I don’t want to spoil her with a falsely
poetic description.I don’t want to fake
it with a pretty simile or metaphor.I’d
rather have you do it yourself.I give
you that much credit.I give you the
power to have an imagination.

I was lying
there with Viagra, finishing my dream—and I heard her start to scream; so I
woke up from my dream and said, “V, honey, what’s the matter?”

And this is the
part you won’t believe:she proceeded to
tell me the same dream about the red truck that I had just had.

Now Freud would
take the meaning of a truck and the color red and turn it into some sexual
innuendo; but I say when two people have the same dream at the same time, it is
definitely worth noting.

We discussed it
for about a half hour and returned to sleep in each other’s arms.Ah, bliss.Those were the days.

The next
morning, Viagra made bacon for breakfast, and since we weren’t having white
wine, I didn’t care.

She patted me on
the head and went off to her job.I
never knew what she did.I wasn’t
interested.It was all the same to me.You wouldn’t be interested either.You see, it doesn’t make any difference:

Viagra went off
to her job and there I was alone, ready for a thrilling day of my own
creation.I went out on the street and
saw all the people going to work.

I bet you might
like to know where we lived.Why should
I tell you that?I told you, we have no
particular hair color—or eye color—and I’ll be damned if I tell you what city,
town, or country we happen to reside in.So put us wherever you like.It’s
not going to change what happens in this story, this story about the secret
meaning of life and death.Possibly my
own death, possibly Sylvia’s.I’m not
going to tell you yet.Oh, sorry, I
meant to say Viagra.Freudian slip.
Sylvia was someone else, someone I don’t remember, someone from a very long
time ago.

Sylvia was my
mother.And Seymour was my father.We grew up in a little town, but I’m not
going to tell you where that was either.Invent it.Make it up.Use a little creativity.

It just so
happens that Viagra looked very much like Sylvia, just as I looked very much like
Seymour, which was only natural since I was his son.

But they both
died.Guess how.Guess.

OK:get ready.They both got run over by a big red truck—as red as a big red
tomato!How’s that for a shock and
surprise?

So that dream that
I dreamed—I dreamed it a lot…and so did Viagra.You see, Viagra was really my sister.Well, half-sister.Her father was
Garrick and he died in England.He
drowned himself.He was a very
intelligent man—or so I’m told.Viagra
dreamed about him too sometimes.I never
did.

So now you
know.This is a story about the great
mystery of life and death.Because any
story about life is really a story about death.Isn’t that where we’re all headed?There are no real characters.There are no real situations.Life is full of illusion, like the color of people’s hair.All you have to do is pretend what you like,
pretend what you want, see it there before you and have it—in your mind.Have it there, have it now.Close your eyes—see it…now open your eyes:there it is!

See?I’ve taught you something, if you’re not
lazy.Refuse to be lazy.Refuse to be weak at all cost.See with your own eyes—not the eyes of
everyone else at work.Please.For your own sake.

I thought I
would skip to the end of this story, so when you get there you can look back
with recognition and say, “Aha!”For by
then, you will see it from a totally different perspective:

When Viagra
returned from work that day, I said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

She asked,
“Why?”

I said, “It’s
time.”

So we walked
down to the big boulevard—you know the one I mean—you can picture it with your
own eyes, can’t you?You can see it like
one of those postcards of the Champs Elysées, can’t you?With the headlights all one stream of white light and the taillights all
one stream of red?Not like tomatoes,
but like real rocket ships, rocket ships to nowhere.

And on the big
boulevard, we waited and waited.Waited
and waited.The waiting was
interminable; it took forever.Yet it
finally appeared.We saw it approaching
in the distance:our big red truck.Our juicy, mouth-watering, ripe, red truck.

And I led her by
the hand.I led her across the
boulevard, where the red light turned into pure white light…and I touched her
face and said, “Viagra, if there’s anything or anyone I love in this world,
it’s you, my darling.”

And we stood in
the white light and awaited our oncoming big red truck….

Now you may wonder
how I could be telling you this story—or where I could be telling it from.Or why I am telling it to you at all.I don’t know the answers to these questions.I don’t know what happened after that.I don’t know where I am now and I don’t know
anything else—except that I know a lot more than you think.

It’s just that I
had nothing better to do today—that’s really the truth.And if truth be told, as it so rarely is, I
simply wanted to amuse myself—and you—with the true story of how I escaped from
this world.This world of metaphors,
similes, boulevards and rocket ships.Tomatoes and women with many different shades of hair.

And red toy
trucks, big and powerful—as powerful as the imagination!—that lead us into a
world where we can be free.